A 20-year-old man charged with manslaughter in the fatal shooting of another man in a Rutland motel room has reached a plea deal with prosecutors.
Kahliq Richardson pleaded guilty Wednesday in Rutland County Superior criminal court to a charge of voluntary manslaughter in the 2021 death of 19-year-old Jonah Pandiani.
As part of a plea agreement with state prosecutors, Richardson faces up to six to eight years in prison, with credit for more than a year he has already served behind bars.
A sentencing hearing is set for Dec. 20.
In an email on Thursday, Rutland County State’s Attorney Ian Sullivan, who prosecuted the case, said there is “no evidence that Mr. Richardson intended to kill Mr. Pandiani.” Instead, Sullivan said, prosecutors had concluded that “this killing was the result of Mr. Richardson’s extraordinarily reckless behavior by handling and manipulating a loaded firearm after a night of consuming impairing substances.”
“The lack of a specific intent to kill and Mr. Richardson’s youth justify this sentence,” Sullivan said.
Robert Kaplan, an attorney representing Richardson, called the case “tremendously tragic.”
“Mr. Richardson is looking to bring an end to what was certainly likely to be the worst thing in his life and a tragic occurrence for Mr. Pandiani’s family,” Kaplan said Thursday.
Richardson was at the Quality Inn in Rutland on April 3, 2021, when police reported witnesses told them he was “showboating” in his handling of a gun. He shot Pandiani in the head, killing him instantly, police said.
Richardson, who was 18 at the time, told police he was in a hotel room with Pandiani and several other people, “drinking a lot and doing drugs,” according to charging documents. The shooting was not intentional, he said.
“He was holding the gun and his friend Jonah asked to see it,” police said Richardson told them. “He went to hand it to him and it went off.”
Earlier this year, Richardson was sentenced on a federal firearms charge stemming from the shooting investigation and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. In that case, Richardson pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing a firearm while being an unlawful user of controlled substances, according to court records.
The sentences on the manslaughter charge and the federal firearms offense will run concurrently, meaning they will be served together and at the same time.
Court records filed by prosecutors in the federal case challenged Richardson’s assertion that the gun went off “accidentally,” stating that at the very least “the defendant’s conduct was grossly reckless, and he displayed an obvious lack of concern for human life.”
Voluntary manslaughter carries a minimum sentence of one year in jail and a maximum of 15 years.
